


Something Missing

by ladyoneill



Series: Lady O's Teen Wolf Bingo Stories [66]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bonding, M/M, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 10:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1684703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoneill/pseuds/ladyoneill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All his life Stiles has felt something or someone was missing.  He wasn't the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Missing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Cotton Candy Bingo prompt: Lost/Found. Derek and Stiles are pre-relationship, bonded at Stiles' birth, though Talia makes Derek forget until Stiles turns sixteen (I dunno, wolfy magic?). Claudia knows about wolves.

Stiles always felt like there was something missing in his life. He'd say it was his mom, except the feeling started long before she became sick and died. When he was very young, he didn't realize what it was; he would cry himself to sleep unconsolable, waking again with no clear memory of why he'd cried. When he was a bit older, he'd say that there was someone in the corner of his eye but he couldn't find them. 

As a child, the only thing that made any of it better was a stuffed gray wolf he'd fallen in love with at the store and demanded his daddy buy him. For years the wolf slept with him. When his mom got sick, sometimes the wolf would even go to school with him in his back-pack.

It wasn't like his life was consumed by whatever was missing; he just always felt like something was, and sometimes the feeling overwhelmed him.

When his mother got sick, he overheard a halting conversation that left him confused, but he didn't want to bother her. She'd been on the phone...

"I need to tell him." There was a moment of silence and his mom's face got red. "He needs to know this before...No, I don't...No," she said firmly. Another silence and the color on her face faded as she slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. "We don't know if it would work at this late stage, and that's not why I called you. It's Stiles. I need..." Another interruption and now she just looked hollow. "Talia, I know it was my decision to wait, but time's running out. I need him to know." More silence and then she yelled again, "I don't care that they're too young." And then she yanked the phone away from her ear and stared at it, before cursing words Stiles had only heard on the playground and the R rated movie he and Scott had snuck into at the theater the year before.

Stiles mom was hospitalized and died a few months later. Whatever the argument had been about was never mentioned and Stiles really didn't care to know.

Three and a half months after she died, he heard the name Talia again, from his dad who was talking to his deputies about the fire in the forest that killed nearly a whole family. Stiles sat on a bench outside his dad's office, doing his homework and eavesdropping as he did most days after school. Sitting next to him was his wolf, out of his back-pack because he needed comfort and didn't know why.

There was an ache in his chest, too--nothing new; he was used to it--and, he rubbed it absently until the pain suddenly faded as a teenage boy sat down on the other side of the stuffed wolf. He was pale and staring at the wall, not moving a muscle, just staring, and Stiles felt a flood of concern. Not even thinking twice, he nudged the wolf over to the boy, who startled and looked down at it.

"He makes me feel better."

The boy hesitantly picked up the wolf, then their eyes met, for just a moment, and Stiles felt such wonder.

"Who are you?" the older boy whispered, his greenish eyes widening.

Before Stiles could answer a young woman came out of his dad's office and the teenager jerked and put down the wolf before rising and following her out of the building.

Stiles stared after him not realizing he was rubbing his chest as the ache returned.

Three weeks after his sixteenth birthday, Stiles heard that voice again, in the forest, Scott at his side. The teenager had turned into a man, all eyebrows and anger, and, looking at him, Stiles felt the ever-present ache of something missing start to fade. Most of the time he no longer even noticed it, just lived with it, but when it disappeared, that he noticed.

"You're Derek Hale." There had been photographs in the paper after the fire and Stiles now knew his name, but saying it, released something weighty inside him. Ignoring Scott's confusion, Stiles took a few steps towards Derek and watched as the older man drew a crumpled and faded photograph from his jacket pocket. He showed it to Stiles who drew in his breath sharply.

"Is this you?"

Stiles nodded dumbly. It was the first photo taken of him, still in the hospital.

"I found it in my mom's safety deposit box after...There was a contract between our parents. Apparently I saw you in the hospital when you were born and I...knew...just knew something...but our parents agreed to keep it secret until you turned sixteen and my mom made me forget until then, except I always knew I was missing..."

"Someone," Stiles finished on a breath as he reached Derek and took his hand in his own trembling one. "Me, too." 

Derek smiled, a tiny thing, but it made Stiles' heart leap and, oh God, everything suddenly felt right.

Nothing was missing anymore.

End


End file.
